


Off-Color Hiring Procedures

by invisoen



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Human Experimentation, Human Wheatley, Memory Alteration, Memory Loss, Mute Chell (Portal), Non-Linear Narrative, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Betrayal, Post-Portal 2, Pre-Canon, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-15
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29346774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/invisoen/pseuds/invisoen
Summary: Wheatley remembers a life before his. Whether it's circuits misfiring, someone else entirely, or truly him is still debatable. He just hopes he gets the details right.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Off-Color Hiring Procedures

_"Robots!_ They are replacing you. They are much smarter than you. They are much stronger than you. They are much more economical workers than you... Be kind to a robot today!”

The man stopped in front of the poster, pasted on the hallway wall outside of the waiting room. He wasted no time, repeating that series of statements like a mantra. Yes, he wouldn’t be caught saying any rude words to a bot today. He nodded once the sentiment was grounded in his head and not getting up anytime soon. The man entered the waiting room, washed in the sunrise’s light. This room was more window than wall, a large part of one instead housing a large mirror. Bright yellow carpet furnished the expansive floor—yellow was the color of optimism, that's happiness—juxtaposed with a complete lack of decoration other than those corporate pieces of art. Similar posters plastered the rest of the walls, driving home the point of cordiality with these bot coworkers.

A loud alarm, perhaps a buzzer noise, made him spring into perfect posture. It made him think of tornado or fire drills, and he was considering curling up against the wall before a chilled voice began to speak:

“Wesly Lawrence, you may enter. Please go through the door on your left.”

Wesly took a moment to recover from the sharp sound, his heartbeat slowing to a normal rate. Entering the door on the left led to another robotic voice being triggered, telling him the next direction to go. The man juggled this with writing down every instruction, line by line and as they came to him—he _was_ going to need to go home after this. And he was bad at retracing his steps.

“Left, ahead, downstairs, go back upstairs, left, door on the right for four times, sit down by the water dispenser and realize that we've just told you to make a loop, then go right. Small break, go back to the water dispenser to keep hydrated. Call your mother and/or other parental figure and ask if the couch is still open in case you don’t get this position. Door on the right, and not joking this time: the end of the hallway is where your interviewer is.”

He followed those instructions perfectly. Just in case it was a test, a test of blind loyalty... Except that his parental figures never picked up. With greater resolve, he entered the "office."

 _Maybe_ Wesly Lawrence should’ve expected his interviewer to be a giant robot wired and strapped to the ceiling. He couldn’t help but look surprised. If he were holding something, he would’ve dropped it, the way he jumped back and gasped in that moment.

“Yes, hello,” the woman’s voice, scrubbed clean of tone and emotion, greeted him. In his head, he measured just how tall she was compared to him. One Wesly was around five, maybe five and a half feet… At least three Weslys. This large contraption lowered herself to his level, her conical eye twisting back and forth to adjust her view of Wesly. She settled on seeing him as far away as he could be, even though she knew it was all illusion. "Welcome to Aperture."

"I'm absolutely delighted to be here, you know," Wesly put a hand out in an effort to be cordial, then forcing it down. No hand to shake. That was a formality he would have to skip out on. "Always loved science," he added with a quick nod.

She tilted her entire head down, yet the eye remained in the same position looking at him. "I didn't ask," she said in staccato bursts of atonality and poisonous apathy, "In fact, I assumed you had the basic intelligence to know that _we_ do the science here. _We_ are hiring a caretaker for the Extended Relaxation Center. Are you aware of that?"

Wesly nervously laughed. Yes, of course he knew what he was applying for. Just... he had no bloody idea what "extended relaxation" was. And how scientific it even was. Though now that he was here, he supposed the job interview was not the best place to ask questions like that.

"Do you have any experience supervising children? Or anyone on the same mental level as a child will do," the woman asked.

He at least had an answer prepared for this, responding, "I actually worked as a teaching assistant for a year."

"And why did that arrangement end?"

Through grit teeth, he thought of anything to say that wasn't "fired" or "told supervising _anything_ was not for him." Wesly cleared his throat, humming until something came to him, "Well, I felt like it wasn't my calling. I wanted to be here, at least helping behind the scenes with the innovation."

"...To be honest, I'm not the brightest knife in the drawer. My strengths aren't with invention. I'm just really good at following instructions, and I can deal with people rather okay."

Why was he being so... honest? He hadn't realized what had slipped out of him before he heard a robotic hum brought out of the contraption before him. She seemed pleased with his humility, saying, "My strength is... science. I live for it." He almost heard a voice behind the woman's, a tiny voice coming from above. His eyes drifted up to see multiple, smaller cores attached to her. Feeding into her voice to produce one.

He swore though, he heard something different produced out of the core, a simple speech synthesized for it, "Switching procedures."

Wesly tightened up. That sounded like the words of rogue artificial intelligence. Like maybe she would kill him, maybe experiment on his body. For _science_. Wesly had lied before. He wasn't that big of a fan of science. "I see no reason why we shouldn't hire you. When can you first come in?" the woman then said. Definitely not the threat of extermination he was expecting. Contrasted to the bright and colorful waiting room, this _chamber_ was death. Death in a cold and sterile space. A lonely one, that would be.

"Er... now," Wesly answered, "I'm not opposed to any specific time."

"Good. Follow the arrows and you'll find the Extended Relaxation Chambers. Someone will be in there to tell you what buttons to push," she said, " _Don't_ touch anything else. You can leave when you're told."

With no knowledge of what was in the chambers, Wesly left the contraption's holding room, more confused than when he entered. He followed the lines on the walls, leading him out of the friendly office space and into the cold halls of colder _science_. He walked between metal railings, only looking down once. Regrettable. Through the tiny holes in the panels, he could barely make out the bottom of the mines. A long, long fall that would be. One that he almost took, nearly jumping off in surprise.

"Hey, new fella!" a man called out, opening the door to what Wesly assumed was the supervisor's room, "Looked down?"

"Yeah, yeah... I did," Wesly laughed as he said.

This man grinned though, waving his hand off to the side and dismissively muttered, "Come on. It's not that bad... Awesome view, ain't it?" Wesly glanced down and off to the side. Above the darkness, he made out the outlines of panels, panels that were constantly moving to suit new orders. He looked up and around him to see cubes and all sorts of semi-liquids tumbling and flowing through tubes. To a child, this would be the kind of place scientists and inventors worked. However, he was a grown-up and this was reality. In Aperture, every procedure carried out in the mines seemed dreamlike and almost fake.

It made for a bloody amazing view though. He nodded, saying, "Yeah. Last time I look down though. I'm terrified of heights, you know." He adjusted his glasses to sit higher on his nose, sighing.

"You still looked, even if you are," the man noted, finally introducing himself, "Name's Rick."

"Wesly," he jumped at the opportunity to shake someone's hand, showing the politeness he had trained himself to exhibit. "I'm the new caretaker in this facility, I believe?"

Rick made a motion for Wesly to follow him after letting go of his hand, muttering, "Yeah. I'm the supervisor. We have a few subjects in stasis right now, and this week, you're going to have to go down there with one of our medical pros... Check everything out, yeah? You're going to wake them up, make them do some exercise, let them read for an hour or so, and then let them go back under."

"Why are they er, in stasis?" Wesly asked.

"It's for control, Wesly. If they're not completely well-rested, if they're worried about anything at all, how can they do their tests?" Rick quoted back at him, "That's what GLaDOS tells us. The subjects say it's the best damn sleep they've ever gotten in their life, so." He kept muttering under his breath, punching in a code to reopen the door to the supervisor's office. "Let's get to work, all right?"

"Right."

* * *

Wheatley stops in the middle of his story. He's aware that stopping means there's a moment for Chell to kick his core into the incinerator. He has such limited time to make his case, show a reason for why everything had happened the way it did. But it seems like Chell had sniffed out part of his story as being outright lie. "Uh... hey?" he asks, "Got any questions? I know you don't remember a lot about Aperture before her... I mean, before you tested with her."

Chell, of course, doesn't answer. Why does he keep asking her questions again? She tilts her head down, in a way that threw the question right back at him, _"Do you even remember_ _?"_

He doesn't think there are any inconsistencies so far. He had worked for Aperture, he did meet with GLaDOS, if only once! Bloody hell, that _was_ his name! But he is probably mixing up some of the details, wasn't he? He really didn't remember much beyond those facts. But redemption, forgiveness, that meant no more lying. Even if he loved his embellishments. "Right. Sorry," Wheatley says, "Look, I don't remember all the little stuff. I've been Wheatley for lifetimes upon lifetimes! Wesly has been Wesly for... I don't know. Much less time..."

Chell kneels down. She puts down the portal gun for a second, picks up Wheatley and places him in one arm. She holds the portal device with her other hand, carrying both contraptions with ease. "Where are you taking me?" Wheatley asks, panic slipping into his voice. It must be the hour of execution. The incinerator is seconds from opening its doors. He's going out the same way she did once. "Please don't burn me, I'll try to remember harder!"

However, they walk past the incinerator and outside her chamber. GLaDOS had been staying uncharacteristically quiet, also allowing Chell the privilege to punish Wheatley. "She knows the full extent of your lies and your destruction. I trust her judgement," she had coldly said. If it weren't for Chell, he would be on the next rocket leaving Earth. Or worse.

Chell, however, didn't intend to destroy Wheatley. She's taking him to the Extended Relaxation Chambers, even after it had been decommissioned due to... the vegetable incident. "You're trying to jog my memory?" he asks.

He struggles to look up, seeing a quick flash of her nodding. It's mercy. The multiple times he had tried to kill her, he also tried to understand why he wanted to. But those feelings were so irrational, he couldn't begin to. He couldn't begin to recapture those feelings of hate, power, envy. Control. Chell knows. Something in that body was a corrupting force, constantly needing new cores to keep those thoughts away from the body's owner. GLaDOS thinks it was Caroline. But what _about_ her presence?

"Chell? Do you think I'm corrupt?" Wheatley asks.

It doesn't take long for Chell to answer, shaking her head. It's enough of an answer for now.

Chell tries to understand what made Wheatley snap. And admittedly, her being much smarter than Wheatley, she must've arrived to the conclusion that the answer lays in his past. What little he has in his memory, scraps found as he floated in space, watching the moon and wishing for its jaws to open again. It was a shock, even to him, that he once was human. Human! Not only did these humans employ him, rely on him, call him stupid and idiotic, he once was apart of that protected class. But he still can't shake that feeling. "You know how I'm designed," he says, "Could I just be lying?"

Perhaps if only to assure him, she shakes her head again. It works. Wheatley rethinks his fears. No, those details were too specific. He remembers parts of the lab that only outsiders see. He doesn't remember a thing outside of Aperture. As if it's locked farther beneath the surface.

Chell stops in her tracks. The office door was locked behind a code, and as a symbol of her trust, she immediately supplies the code Wheatley's memory provided her.

The mechanical door opens.


End file.
